Dash, a generous, relentlessly defiant graf artist and photographer born into the arms of art world nobility, who lived to live and to subvert, died yesterday of an apparent heroin overdose at age 27. Daniel chronicles his own efforts to interview Dash for a story in 2007 and examines why, after days of simply spending time with him, the interview became totally irrelevant:

Throughout our interactions in L.A., Dash exhibited absolute warmth and generosity with me, and none of the pretense, competition, and ill will so often associated with the downtown New York scene. He listened intently to those around him. He displayed patience and intense affection for those he cared about. And every outward impulse - every sensation or emotional cue - seemed to both alarm and excite him.